Filed under: Hacks, Internet Tools
Give Mail.app a three-pane view
For those of you longing for the often-requested three-pane view in Mail.app, Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings has dug up yet another stellar find: an actual working version.
This Ars Technica forum thread begins with the typical "gee, it'd be great if..." post which oh-so-often yields productive results such as the screenshot you see in this post: a hacked version of Mail.app with a three pane view. Fortunately, this hacked version of Mail.app has a different name (MailWidescreen) so you don't have to bite your nails over whether to overwrite your original Mail.app. Still, it would be good practice to back it up anyway for good measure.
Personally, I think the three pane view in email apps is one of those needless 'change for the sake of change' developments that seems to have oozed out of an admittedly old email UI industry. Email subjects can be pretty useful and revealing, while most emails are never long enough to warrant all the space a three pane view gives to the message, and this view seems to enhance both of these complications: subjects are cut short, while white space is wasted on typically short emails. Just note Exhibit A - this post's screenshot.
With my $0.02 out of the way, however, check out the forum thread for details on this hack's development, or simply use the direct link to the .ZIP file right here.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
PixelNurse said 6:30AM on 6-02-2006
Hmm... I think I like the idea of that actually. I take David's point though, perhaps on lower resolution displays this might not be the most efficient use of the space, but sitting in front of a 1920x1200 screen right now it looks pretty appealing. Might give it a go, thanks TUAW!
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Piotr Gajos said 6:47AM on 6-02-2006
Simply amazing!!! Thanks a lot, I love how Mail.app feels now and what is the best - I haven't realized how much I needed this hack until I installed it. Thanks for the link!
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Rolphus said 7:09AM on 6-02-2006
This isn't as elegant as the way Outlook 2003 does it (wow, never thought I'd say a Mac app wasn't as elegant as a Windows one), but it's not a bad hack. Outlook's 2-line-per-email middle pane gives the subject line plenty of room, and also shows the from address and time, which I think works well.
I personally believe that the 3-column view is handy, especially when you have a lot of large emails to deal with (which I do at work). It's also useful because it makes finding an email by subject slightly easier for me - you have more emails vertically per screen in the middle column which makes visual scanning easier.
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Chris said 7:48AM on 6-02-2006
Hi there,
the jury is still out on this, no wide screen. He has though released this as a Mail.app plugin which is nice.
Chris
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Ben Drawbaugh said 9:37AM on 6-02-2006
I couldn't disagree more, the 3 pane view makes better use of the space. More often then not there is wasted space next to the subject, which is often short. I wish those who sent me mail used long subjects, rather than subjects like "Hey" or "Client's Name". The messages on the other hand are usually long and include many forwards and RE:
Thanks for the 3 pane view, down with whitespace.
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Farhan said 9:37AM on 6-02-2006
People, people, people. It's Apple Mail or simply "Mail" not Mail.app. Why do people still insist on calling Apple Mail, "Mail.app"? This is the same thing as writing Mac as "MAC".
Just my $0.02.
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spike said 9:43AM on 6-02-2006
Farhan, quite right. It;s not Photoshop.app, or Outlook.exe either.
And people who write MAC instead of Mac shouldn't be allowed near any computers. at all. ever.
Theres two more cents.
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Kim said 9:43AM on 6-02-2006
Does it do a three column view only? I use three panes in Mulberry, but with two columns.
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Grover said 10:09AM on 6-02-2006
You might want to update the post as there's a plug-in further down the thread that uses a more elegant approach and allows you to resize the panes.
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Darren said 10:43AM on 6-02-2006
This does not work on 10.4.6 on an iMac Core Duo/Intel. It tells me to get a version that will work with 10.4.
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Greg said 11:13AM on 6-02-2006
This totally makes up for my wasted time with monolingual yesterday!
Everybody needs this.
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zx said 11:37AM on 6-02-2006
so good! thanks.
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Chris said 12:05PM on 6-02-2006
Love it, love it, love it!!
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David Chartier said 1:47PM on 6-02-2006
To those wondering why some websites write 'Mail' as 'Mail.app': go try running a search for topics about Mail by using just the search term 'mail' and see how many results are actually on target. ;)
I completely agree, the name of the app is 'Mail', but in hopes of simplifying searches and helping people find what they need, the term 'Mail.app' is a bit more on the money.
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choiboi said 8:14PM on 6-02-2006
perfect! I've been waiting for this. That's why I switched to Thunderbird. Three-column view is absolutely the best layout for dual monitors. Inbox on one screen, messages on the other... sweet optimized real estate!
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Adrian vG said 5:54AM on 6-03-2006
It's only nescessary if you get 100 important mails per day. Even at 1680*1050 I prefer only seeing about 5 rows of the mailbox, and the rest is the message window. This was a good idea, but takes up too much space. It's like the qeustion why people maximize the web browser windows when most web pages only are 800 pixles wide.
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thomas_h said 8:45PM on 6-04-2006
yeah why do people call it mail.app? it sounds ridicolous, its like windows people calling outlook "outlook.exe" call it Mail or Apple Mail instead.
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Mark said 10:03PM on 6-21-2006
People call it Mail App because Mail is such a generic word.
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